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The 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act signaled a new era in business-education partnerships - one many believed would foster more meaningful connections between the nation's classrooms and the worlds of employment and work. The Act defined a set of benchmarks for employer participation in school-to-work partnerships. To date, attempts to gauge the actual extent to which employer participation has met or surpassed these benchmarks have reflected the reports of school officials and agency personnel rather than employers themselves - making it difficult to draw a national and broadly based picture of the scale of employer involvement. This report, with support from the National School-to-Work Office, utilizes data from the 1997 administration of the National Employer Survey to gauge the national impact of school-to-work programs since the initiative's inception. A representative sample of establishments with 20 or more employees were asked by the U.S. Census Bureau to describe their involvement in school-to-work programs and work-based learning initiatives. This report analyzes their answers and offers two overarching conclusions. First, there is broad-based involvement of employers in both of these activities. Real involvement stretches across all industries and all establishment sizes. Second, for both manufacturing and non-manufacturing establishments, the best predictor of participation in school-to-work partnerships is involvement in community activities.

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